Outpost (41 page)

Jane
took a mug of coffee to the observation bubble.

Sian
was watching the blizzard scour the tanks and gantries of the refinery. She was
weeping.

Jane
put a hand on her shoulder.

'Easier
if we just died,' said Sian. 'It would be better than this. A moment of fear, a
moment of pain, then nothing. This is worse. This is slow torture.'

'Yeah.'

'Everyone
I ever knew is dead. Family. Friends. But I had Punch. I was all right as long
as I had Punch.'

'Yeah.'

'I've
got nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Bit by bit it all got stripped away.' She
gestured to the snowstorm. 'This place is hell. Barren. Sterile. It's like the
universe has taken off its mask and we can see its true face.'

'Want
to open a bottle of wine?' asked Jane, and immediately regretted the lame
suggestion. Failing as a priest, failing as a friend. Absurd to think there was
any consolation she could offer in the face of absolute despair, some
combination of words that would make it all better.

She
sat down.

A
few nights ago, she and Ghost lay in bed and planned the future of the human
race.

'If
there are kids,' said Ghost, 'will you tell them about Jesus?'

'No,'
said Jane. 'I'm happy to be the last Christian. If they come across a Bible I
will tell them it's all fairy tales and nonsense.'

Jane
put her arm round Sian's shoulder. They sat in the dark as the Arctic storm
raged around them.

Jane
visited Rawlins's office. She thumbed through the personnel files. Gary Punch.
She snipped his picture from the front page of his file.

She
took the picture to the improvised chapel she had established in one of the dormitory
rooms. She taped the photograph to the memorial wall.

She
sat and contemplated the mug shots.

Crew
who left aboard oil supply vessel
Spirit of Endeavour:

Rosie
Smith.

Pete
Baxter.

Ricki
Coulby.

Edgar
Bardock.

Frank
Rawlins, first to succumb to the infection.

Dr
Rye. Missing. Presumed suicide.

Ivan
and Yakov. Both ripped apart aboard
Hyperion.

Mal.
Murdered.

Gus.
Murdered and eaten.

Nail's
picture lay on a chair. Jane didn't want to add him to the memorial wall. He didn't
deserve it. No one would pray for him.

The
canteen kitchen.

Sian
sat morose on a bar stool while Ghost greased the damaged shotgun. He
reassembled the weapon
.
He racked the slide. The mechanism jammed. He threw the gun down on the kitchen
counter.

'Fucked.
And Punch took all the ammunition.' Ghost took a cleaver from a drawer.

'Want
to help me patrol?'

They
walked the perimeter of the rig. Ghost brought the ruined shotgun. He swung it
round his head and flung it far as he could. They watched it fall to the ice
two hundred metres below. They looked towards the island.

'Nail
can't stay out there for ever,' said Ghost. 'Nothing for him in that bunker.
We've got food, heat, everything he needs. Sooner or later he'll try to make it
aboard. I reckon he'll try to climb an anchor cable. Doubt he could make it,
but he'll give it a shot.'

'What
about Punch?' asked Sian. Jane hadn't told her about the cannibalised remains
they found in the bunker. 'I don't think he's coming back.'

Ghost
decided to give her a task, something to keep her occupied.

'Do
me a favour. Disable the platform lift. Take out a fuse or something.'

Sian
headed for the airlock. She opened the exterior door and walked out on to the
platform. She could see infected passengers milling on the ice far below her.
She reached for the platform controls. She hesitated, then pressed Down.

The
lift descended the south leg of the refinery. Infected
Hyperion
passengers and crew looked up.
They saw Sian descending to meet them, and stretched their arms to reach her.

She
opened the railing gate and closed her eyes, ready to be torn apart.

The
platform jolted to a halt. Sian fell to her knees. The lift rose. She looked
up. Ghost high above her, leaning out of the airlock door.

He
dragged Sian back inside the rig. He helped her to her feet.

'We'll
pretend that didn't happen, all right?'

Jane
sat with Ghost in the canteen. They emptied the backpack. They contemplated the
stack of explosives and detonators on the table in front of them. Bricks of C4
wrapped in paper.
DEMOLITION CHARGE Ml 12 WITH TAGGANT.

'Sian's
probably right,' said Jane. 'We're kidding ourselves. We're not moving an inch.
We are trapped here for ever. This place is our tomb.'

'I
don't know about that.'

'This
is the endgame. Nobody is coming to save us. We've got no ride home. If the
cables don't drop, we're done.'

'My
dad died of stomach cancer,' said Ghost. 'He had a car, an E-type Jag. He was
restoring it in his garage. He worked hard even though he wouldn't get to drive
it. I asked why he bothered. He said, "Never leave a job half
done.'"

'I'm
so tired.'

'We've
got a plan. We've got things we can do, moves we can make. Still plenty of
fight left.'

'Yeah,'
sighed Jane. 'I suppose. But that's the problem. I can cope with despair. But
hope keeps fucking me up.'

Ghost
stood and began to stack the explosives into three separate piles.

'Come
on,' he said. 'Get the job done.'

Ghost
refilled the flamethrower. He used a SCUBA compressor to pump the tanks with diesel,
and pressurise them with nitrogen.

They
went outside and thawed the couplings. Jane fired a jet of flame at each giant
lock pin. Ice liquefied and steamed, exposing metal.

Jane
held the flashlight
while Ghost rigged the
explosives. He
took off his gloves. He unwrapped
C4. He slapped patties of explosive against the massive cable coupling,
punched them with his fist, moulded them into a single tight mass. He pointed
to a nearby wall.

'This
is good. This should work well. We're boxed in. Nice, enclosed space. It should
focus the concussion. Be a hell of a bang when it goes.'

He
pressed blasting caps into the clay with his thumb before the explosive froze
too hard to penetrate. They weatherproofed each charge with garbage bags.

'What
do you want to use for detonation cord?' asked Jane.

'Strip
some wire from a few extension leads. Nothing much to it. All we need is enough
copper thread to carry a single six- volt pulse. Click. Bang.'

They
returned to the canteen and spliced wire. Heaters. De- humidifiers. Computers.
Cases prised open with a screwdriver. Flex stripped, coiled and stacked on a
Formica tabletop.

'We
need about two hundred and fifty metres for each charge. We'll run the cord to
a central point. We have to blow all three charges at once. If we blow the
cables one at a time the last rope will take the full weight of the rig. It
will be under so much tension we'll never get the pin to release.'

'Right.'

'No
screw-ups. No breaks in the wire. We get one shot at this. No second go.'

The
storm cleared. They slung cable over their shoulders and headed outside.

Jane
helped Ghost run wire from each explosive charge. They spooled flex along the
walkways and metal steps. They taped the wires to girders and railings. The
wires converged at the pump house, a cabin that housed monitor equipment for
the three great distillation tanks.

They
smashed a window and fed the cables inside. Ghost webbed the remaining windows
with duct tape. Proof against the blast. He laid three pairs of ear-defenders
on a desk.

One
last inspection to check the charges were properly rigged and the detonator
wire unbroken.

'Beautiful
sky,' said Jane. She pulled back her hood and craned to see a dusting of stars.
A delicate pink twilight to the east.

She
looked out over the refinery. A crystal palace. White-on- white. Frosted steel.
Cross-beams and scaffold towers dripping ice. Snow-dusted storage tanks. Crane
jibs heavy with icicles. Every north-facing surface caked and glazed.

'Reckon
Nail is lurking round here?' asked Jane.

'Keep
a lookout for prints,' said Ghost. 'I doubt he could make it up the anchor
cables, but he's desperate enough to try.' He lifted his boot and pointed at
the sole. 'Zigzag tread, all right? Anything else is him.'

Ghost
struggled to unscrew the cap of his hip flask with a gloved hand. He swigged.

'Back
in a moment, all right?'

Ghost
had spent the last hour thinking it through. This was their last chance of
escape. If the anchor cables failed to detach they would be permanently
marooned at the top of the world. In a few weeks the food and fuel would run
out and they would be forced to choose between a knife-slash to the throat or a
long walk in the snow. He pictured his body on a high gantry facing the sea. A
grinning corpse cradling a blade. Maybe Jane's mummified cadaver would be
beside him, holding his skeletal hand.

He
walked to the corner of the rig. He took a fist of explosive from his pocket.
He had kept a small lump of C4. A vague plan. If the anchor cables failed to
detach, he could prepare a small charge and tape it beneath a table in the
canteen. Cook a meal. Invite Jane and Sian to sit for dinner. Make it quick and
clean. End it all mid-conversation.

He
told himself not to be so stupid. He had spent so long facing down mortal
terror he had made a fetish of death. He had been planning an elaborate demise
instead of fighting to live. He added the nub of explosive to the main charge.

Jane
fetched the initiators from the canteen. A black plastic case. Three initiators
sitting snug in a foam bed. Each initiator was a pistol-grip with a red Fire
button on top.

Jane
tested batteries in a Maglite, to make sure they held a charge.

She
slotted batteries into the butt of each grip.

Jane
looked for Sian.

'I
think she went outside,' said Ghost.

Airlock
52. A winking red corridor light. An alert that the exterior door had been left
open.

Jane
put on her coat and stepped outside. She saw Sian standing at the end of a
walkway. She was leaning over a railing, looking down at the ice far below.

Weeks
ago, when Jane was fat and hopeless, she had leaned over a similar section of
railing and willed herself to jump into the sea. She wondered if Sian was, at
that moment, thinking of flinging herself from the refinery. Sian leaned
further forward.

'Hey,'
said Jane, reaching for the only words that might cut through Sian's despair.
'Come on, girl. We need your help.'

They
walked to the pump house. Ghost twisted wire round the terminals of each
initiator.

'I
taped up the windows,' he said. 'We should probably stand back from the glass.
I'm not sure how big a bang this is going to be.'

They
stood facing each other. 'Want to say a prayer?'

'No,'
said Jane.

'Everybody
ready?'

'Yeah.'

'Okay.
Here we go. Three. Two. One.'

Nikki
pressed her ear to the bunker door. No wind noise.

She
dug a crash helmet from a pile of snowmobile components heaped by the tunnel
wall. She opened the bunker door. Two infected passengers stood with their
backs to her, looking out to sea. She swung the helmet and smashed their
skulls.

Nikki
climbed crags. She crouched on high ground. She surveyed the refinery through
binoculars. The fog had cleared. Rampart was lit by weak twilight, a dawn that
would never break.

She
adjusted focus.

'You see?'
said the voice of Nikki's dead boyfriend. '
They've cut away the stairs
and ladders. There is no way to get aboard
.'

'I
could climb the cables.'

'Too steep. Too smooth
.'

'I
could fetch rope. I could grapple a railing.'